If you've got your heart set on entertaining visiting monarchs, make sure you have milkweed, either in its wild form or the cultivated variety, Asclepias tuberosa, also known (for good reason!) as butterfly weed.

We're most familiar with the bright orange variety, but there's pink and white cultivars, as well.

The orange ones, two to three feet high, grow in our gardens and on sun-drenched roadsides.

Look for the orange spots of color as you go whizzing by this summer, and if you're able to get closer to a plant, you may well see the vivid orange and black striped caterpillar of the Monarch dining sumptuously on the leaves.

Milkweeds produce a noxious substance which the caterpillar and butterfly absorb, thus rendering them unpalatable to would-be predators.

Butterfly weed is one of the easiest perennials to grow from seed, but it can also be obtained at Claire's Perennials in Patterson, N.Y.

No persnickety Polly, it's ridiculously simple to grow, appreciating both sun and lean soil. As an herbaceous perennial, it dies to the ground in the winter, but watch out!

It's very late to emerge in the spring. Many's the gardener who's given up and subsequently pulled out the thick, fibrous root by accident. Wait for it.

The long-lasting orange flowers present their best bib and tucker around July 1, and continue for weeks.

If you're fortunate, a searching monarch mommy will lay her eggs on your asclepias, and you'll get to watch the process of hatching, caterpillar growing and eating (look for scalloping on the leaves).

Once the caterpillars mature, they attach themselves to the plant or a nearby structure, there to turn into the chrysalis with the golden band from which they obtain their name, monarch.

Known for their amazing migration, monarchs search for and feed on butterfly weed as they fly thousands of miles down the East coast from Canada to Mexico each autumn, and back again in spring.

Won't you help them out by planting their favorite flower?

Colleen Plimpton has cultivated her sloping acre in Bethel for 17 years. A garden coach and educator, contact her at colleenplimpton@yahoo.com for information on gardening classes held in her garden. See her blog at www.colleenplimpton.blogspot.com.